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About this project

Remember what it was like? playing a game when you and the game were one, where you were the one out on the edge saving the world? Well here is your chance to breathe the electric air of the future.

What is Vektropolis? It’s Fast Paced Combat that combines the best elements of twitch thrills with city building and tower defense games. Vektropolis is a vector graphic combat game where the player uses their flying and shooting skills to protect their city from invaders -both alien and human. Play is split into rounds and comprises of missions both set and dynamic- so when you are attacked anything can happen. After a mission is completed the player is assessed and rewarded with payment. They can put this payment into growing the city or into their craft. The more the city grows, the bigger the population, the bigger the bonus. The bigger the bonus the more the rewards!

Why do this? We've been making games for the past twenty years and although we've both worked on hits we haven't been able to make the kind of game we have wanted to. Well, this is our chance, if you'd like to see what we can do and how we can make fun original games then please back our Kickstarter. The tech for Vektropolis has been designed from the ground up. Implementing bespoke systems for everything to obtain maximum performance (all capture was done on a 4 year old laptop), there's no other way to get the most out of hardware.

We live in a world were most publishers want to own intellectual property (IP) for nothing in return other than barely the costs of development, while controlling the path a project takes and taking the soul out of the developer. Thus, as well as taking the rewards, crippling development.

Vektropolis has been a labour of love for years, being different it's always a hard sell to publishers, who's producers keep their jobs (and their salaries) regardless of whether they take us on or not. If it doesn't fit into one of their boxes they're accountable if it doesn't succeed and it becomes a risk to their personal security. No ground breaking game has ever copied everything that's gone before, yet we still live in a world where most people don't seem to see this.

There are many stories about very successful games that have gone like this, a case in point we have personal awareness of was Lemmings, a game published by Psygnosis but not funded by them as they deemed it risky / unsellable. Our lead programmer developed several games for Psygnosis at that time.

We first developed this game before G-Police, we even showed the first version in 1993/1994 to Sony Leeds (called Megoplis - it wasn't wire frame then) who then went on the next year to create G-Police, frustrating sometimes because what we had then (and now) is better!

Please fund us - we promise a world stormer!

We do all our primary development / testing on PCs that are substantially below the cutting edge. We figure it's easy to get high performance out of the highest spec machines and much more difficult to achieve it from the former. This means that performance should be good on most PCs, even with the most basic on board graphics chip sets.

Vektropolis is the culmination of working to pay the bills and moving it forward in our spare time, it's come to the point now where we're so close and all we need is the opportunity that crowd funding can provide to create the space for a last push to completion.

So, what are you backing? Our development is split into different phases: Phase 1: Kickstarter funds our twitch section of the game- so that means a robust, unique and exciting single player experience. We will have elements such as ship upgrades between rounds but we won't have the time to add the strategic elements until we have that released. We estimate that this will be complete for everyone to play in October 2014. We have already prototyped an Oculus Rift version for which support will be included in this release too. Why? because we love it, and from our tests we have found that line draw vectors create a greater depth contrast than the more mainstream applications using modern and mainstream graphics techniques.

(Laying waste to some invaders)

(Laying waste to even more invaders who are threatening the city)

(Walkers, running amok through the city, crushing humans and vapourising any resistance)

Phase 2: Multiplayer support and tactical gameplay. This is the meat of the project and where the game becomes so much more. What we plan to do here is assign each player to have their own city to defend. Players cities are raided by invaders and players fight to survive. However the choice is up to the player on whether they co operate , hobble or outright destroy their team mates. In this phase we want to see how you play the game and that will tell us how to develop the next phase.

Phase 3 City Upgrades, other multiplayer modes. What we look do here is allow players to upgrade vehicles and their cities between attack phases. Players will be able to grow and build their city and buy defenses and infrastructure to help them survive attack. We will roll these upgrades out to single player and multiplayer mode. We look to our players to advise us and shape what we build for Phase 4.

Phase 4 We are looking at clan support, league support and interesting scenarios such as tactical nukes and subverting rival cities population. This is first and foremost a twitch game but there will be opportunity to base build and upgrade. There has never been a game like this and only Kickstarter can make this possible.

We will blur the lines a little between releases, so when it makes sense to add a new feature, we will.

Behind the scenes we've been working on a new base system that will allow roads, train tracks and buildings all to be at varying altitudes with a much more regular data organisation for both performance and ease of use

(newer material with city and game code stripped down)

(Earlier experimentation, late 2011 / early 2012)

You may have seen us in the press, we are not a huge studio that pretends to be an Indie, we are a very small team of dedicated and decorated industry veterans who have been working on getting this game completed for the past few years while holding down real jobs. Well, we're close now, we need your help for a final and full time 6 month push to make this game happen.

After a lot of experimentation, the good news is that the game’s tech is nailed, the basic design is ready to go and the team have now quit their day jobs. We believe in this game, and others in the games industry that have seen what we’ve got and they believe too. We don't want to take this to a publisher, we want to publish this ourselves and plough the profits back into supporting the game with new features, features that the players and our backers will tell us to make. Our ambition is to bring old school arcade thrills back and combine them with a robust multiplayer experience. We know where we want to take this title but we do want to involve you in making this happen. All going well we are looking at early access beta around October this year.

We obtained an Oculus Rift prototype a couple of months ago and began experimenting, at the time our graphics pipeline wasn't as suited as it could be for performance (the ordering forced quite a few unnecessary calculations to be done twice in a frame) so we've been re-working it.

We finished our initial tests just before looking into the KickStarter pitch and we plan to get back onto it next month after we're hopefully successful.

We'd sorted all the motion sensing and were in the final stages of working out the best distortion and separation to obtain the best effect for depth perception.

We're very excited about Oculus Rift and can't wait to play it ourselves using it.

Support will be available at the same time as the full release (or earlier for £25 pledge or more).

Risks and challenges

Our main risk is that we make a game that isn't as good as we think it is and it doesn't get the support we need to take it past the first phase. It is a possibility but we are running a really tight ship to get this game to you. So although when we hit our goals we will be able to deliver the arcade title Vektropolis, we cant say with any certainly how long development will continue for. If it is popular, as we hope it will be, it will be evolving and growing for many years to come.

The other risk is testing and feedback, we are not a major studio - we are not even small studio and as such we don't have the resources to hire 500 testers for Localisation and Compatibility testing. Some of the hard earned money you donate will be spent configuring different video cards and chip sets looking for bugs. We will be looking for a dedicated few to help us find these bugs and in return we will allow early access to some of our special content and some special rewards along the way.

So, in short we can't properly hope to test this without community support from donors like you.

We aim to develop a world perfectly synced with 10,000s of objects across multiple machines, even with slow or lagged connections. We'll be taking a very different approach to coding to network data protocol in order to achieve this. It's theoretically sound though will involve a different approach to programing game behaviors and may well be difficult.

Rewards

Pledge £1 or more

Pledge £5 or more

Pledge £5 and we'll give you a special thanks credit in the game. This is optional and all backers from this tier upwards will receive this.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £10 or more

3 backers

Support Vektropolis! Get a digital code that will unlock a specially designed craft, which is unique to backers. Also receive a special insignia on the persistent online score tables to indicate you’re a backer. The code will be available from the first time you can access the game, this includes closed testing mentioned in other pledges. Plus rewards in previous pledge.

Estimated delivery:Jun 2014

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Pledge £15 or more

63 backers

Reserve a digital copy of the game and save £5 on the launch cost of the game, plus all rewards above. Remember, you pay only once so nothing to pay forever after that for any of the massive updates and new content we have planned. Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £20 or more

9 backers

Have special vehicle type unlocked in your digital copy without grinding! Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £21 or more

0 backers

We've just announced a Tablet version. Get in there early with Early Access Beta for Android / iOS. Early adopters will get a copy of the game with a special accent for their account. Plus rewards from previous pledges (where applicable to phones / tablets).

Estimated delivery:Nov 2014

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Pledge £22 or more

8 backers
Limited (92 left of 100)

Be part our our early compatibility testing, this means getting versions of the game that won't play properly or perhaps even work on your video chip set. You will share our pain and gain access before the early access beta and is an essential step to getting to the beta version. We'd like you to send reports (i.e. whether it runs or not, screen shots, performance stats etc.). Plus all the rewards above

Estimated delivery:Jul 2014

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Pledge £25 or more

15 backers

Be part of our Oculus Rift beta testing. Plus all rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Aug 2014

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Pledge £30 or more

5 backers

Get in there early with Early Access Beta which may contain bugs some of which will be quite horrible we're sure.
Early adopters will get a copy of the game with a special accent for their account. Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Jul 2014

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Pledge £35 or more

2 backers

Get downloadable copy of DRM free soundtrack to the game Vektropolis and a copy of the game with a special accent for their account. Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Aug 2014

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Pledge £50 or more

5 backers
Limited (195 left of 200)

Get in there early and get an in game credit as QA (Quality Assurance) when you sign up for our test program. You get a copy of the game and unique accent for your account at this level.
Get special access to our forums and help shape and improve the game. Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Jun 2014

Ships anywhere in the world

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Pledge £60 or more

2 backers

Participate in the close beta program. Credited in the game as Closed Beta QA. when you sign up for the closed beta program - play the game before anyone else! Also gain access to vehicle customising tools to make appearance of your craft unique.
Includes a copy of the game, access to our and private forums. Plus rewards from previous pledges.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

Ships anywhere in the world

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Pledge £75 or more

3 backers

Receive one of a limited number of special Vektropolis T-Shirts (different sizes will be available). Plus all rewards above

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

Ships anywhere in the world

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Pledge £100 or more

2 backers

Receive one of a limited number of special Vektropolis Hoodies (different sizes will be available). Plus all rewards above

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge £150 or more

1 backer
Limited (999 left of 1000)

Design your own custom graffiti which will appear somewhere on the walls of the buildings. We will provide bespoke tools for you to do this. Submit it and provided it's not likely to cause offence we'll include it. Artwork will remain in the game for at least 12 months after delivery. Plus all rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £300 or more

0 backers
Limited (500 left of 500)

Have a bigger canvas and design your own billboards, these can include neon lighting and animations if required. We will provide bespoke tools for you to do this. Submit it and provided it's not likely to cause offence we'll include it. These can include personal messages or business related messages. Artwork will remain in the game for at least 12 months after delivery. Plus all rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £500 or more

0 backers

Have your own personal special thanks message placed in the game's credits, with an additional associate producer credit. Nothing offensive please. Plus all rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £1,000 or more

0 backers
Limited (20 left of 20)

The same as the previous pledge except each level will have places of prominence reserved for always displaying one of these billboards (hence the very limited number). There's no way of knowing what the player will do though we can guarantee that anyone who even plays for a short while will see one of these! Plus all the rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge £5,000

0 backers
Limited (10 left of 10)

Have a unique enemy craft added and by us and named by you. Appropriate names only. Also get a credit as an 'Executive Producer' in the game. Plus all the rewards above.

Estimated delivery:Sep 2014

Funding period

Apr 9, 2014 - May 9, 2014
(30 days)

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